I am surely in the toils.

Here's the article.

(out of spoons, can someone please write this out for our screen reading friends?)

[Image: a facebook post by Emily Bolander. Transcription of text below]

I speak English.

I live in Japan and only speak English, and maybe 20 Japanese phrases.

I grew up in a world of “go back to where you came from. This is America. We speak English here.”

Not once has any individual in Japan told me, “This is Japan. We speak Japanese. Go back to where you came from.” Not one time.

Individuals give up their seats in waiting rooms, on trains, or on busses here when they see me pregnant or carrying my children. No words, just a simple standing and gesturing for me to sit in their place.

I can barely thank them in their native language.

Masks were worn here before a global pandemic ever surfaced. Before Covid-19 was circulating rampantly, the Japanese people wore masks to protect their communities.

Not themselves.

Me.

They didn’t want ME to get their sniffles, and they expect me to not want to give them mine.

It’s not political. It’s not an infringement of rights. It’s a matter of, “Maybe it’s just allergies, but I dont know that for sure, so I wear a mask to keep from spitting on you when I speak.”

Freedom is a beautiful thing, yes.

But collectivism isn’t a threat to freedom, y'all.

Caring about someone else’s reality doesn’t make you weak, and for the love of God it doesn’t make you a “sheeple.”

Community is a beautiful thing.

So is compassion.

So is empathy.

I love my country dearly, hear that. But in so many ways, I KNOW we can do better.

[End transcription ID]

Outraged Casey Anthony: “Hey, I was meant to be the worst Florida mom ever!”

From Newsweek:

Florida medical examiner’s report has raised questions about a 17-year-old Fort Myers resident’s death from COVID-19 complications last month. The teenager, Carsyn Davis, was a cancer survivor with a rare, ongoing autoimmune disorder. She died of respiratory failure after contracting the new coronavirus in early June.

The medical examiner’s report notes that Davis attended a 100-person church event, where people were not required to wear face masks, roughly two weeks before she died in a Miami-Dade County hospital. During the nine days that followed, she was given antibiotics, hydroxychloroquine and oxygen via her grandfather’s portable machine by her parents while at home. Her mother, Carole Brunton Davis, is a nurse. The hospital recommended intubation when Davis was admitted to its pediatric unit on June 19, but her parents declined the procedure, according to the county medical examiner. She received plasma therapy and was eventually intubated on June 22, but died one day later.

The mother needs to lose her license. Nurses are the worst.

This “covid isn’t real” bs has gone way way way too far. This poor little girl lost her life because of her mother’s arrogance and stupidity. This is so so awful and it didn’t need to happen. But it did. And the only thing we can do is prevent it from ever happening again. But how?

So my brother bowled with this girl both in school and in on the local youth bowling league. Her step-dad is a PA as well and stood by while his wife did this. Unfortunately her bio-dad was no longer in the picture because he died when she was 10. She was a sweet girl and didn’t dying this way

The mom is something else Trans people are a threat to her kids but not covid?

If you want to help out the Navajo Nation, please consider donating to them at the following:

5/22/2020

Covid is not over and black lives still matter. Stop trying to "go back to normal" when shit is still happening.

Stop going on trips and going to restaurants without masks.

Keep educating yourself and protesting and calling and donating and signing petitions.

Wear a mask. End white supremacy. Defund police.

I know it's tiring but it's not over for either thing even though people are pretending it is. I know the overlap is exhausting. But be safe, social distance, and keep fighting the good fight.

Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder 🐶

This is the best article I’ve run across so far about contamination, groceries, masks etc. It’s by someone with the credentials to have written it, it is really straightforward, and clarified so much for me.  I’m passing it on because you may need to read it too.

Why we need masks for all

Okay, I am going to put myself out here: we need masks for all. If you live in a country that doesn’t have widespread use of masks in public, this one is for you.

Here is a graph of coronavirus trajectories by country. All those countries in blue have widespread public use of masks, in addition to other measures.

Obviously I am not basing all of this on a few countries that have managed to slow the spread. Here is a link to a summary of 33 scientific papers that show that masks (even handmade ones, we’ll get to that) reduce spread of infection for the general population. Many of these studies are themselves meta-analyses of data. The evidence is mounting that public mask usage is an important strategy to reduce COVID-19 transmission. I want to highlight this paper in particular which modeled that public mask usage could slow or even stop the spread of an influenza pandemic.

(The CDC and WHO still maintain that healthy people should not wear masks. Preserving them for healthcare workers is important, but that is a separate question from whether they work or not. It seems likely from the evidence presented above that they do help at least somewhat)

Of course, there is a nationwide shortage of masks in most countries. Medical grade masks must be reserved for healthcare workers (if you have some, look for local ways to donate them, many hospitals are accepting donations). So where do we get the masks for the public? We follow the lead of the Czech Republic and Taiwan and make our own. Here is a great summary of how the Czech Republic went from 0 to 100% public mask usage, in less than two weeks.

A person makes masks and a “mask tree” where neighbors could donate handmade masks to others. Note that masks (or anything really) can be effectively sterilized by heating above 70C (158F) either in the oven for paper masks or using regular cycle in your washer and dryer for cloth masks.

Studies have shown even basic household materials like t-shirts can be effective at blocking droplets that contain viruses.

Are they as good as n95 respirators? No. But outside of certain medical procedures, the disease mainly spreads through droplets, and these homemade masks are still pretty good (though not perfect) at blocking those. This goes both ways: the masks provide a layer of protection to protect you, but ALSO contain a lot of the droplets you could be spreading. Some people with the disease don’t have any symptoms at all, so wearing masks is also important to reduce the chance of infecting others.

Masks, like social distancing, don’t have to be 100% effective in order to help flatten the curve.

Here is a model from the Seattle area, which shows how small changes in social contacts can effect total case numbers. You can see that even reducing contacts 25% has a profound effect on case numbers after a few weeks. The same thing would be true if wearing masks reduced transmissions by just 25%.

I want to point out that as long as you don’t take risks you wouldn’t take otherwise and keep your hands off the mask, there is very little risk to doing this now as we wait for further scientific evidence. And the evidence is mounting that simple masks reduce risk and slow spread.

In the Czech republic, they went from no one wearing masks to 100% (it is now mandatory in public) in about 10 days. While the mandatory order to cover your mouth and nose is only a week old, they have seen a slower growth of cases than the rest of Europe despite lots of testing.

Basic masks can be made with just a t-shirt and scissors, no sewing required. This video shows you how, just wear your mask higher on your face than this guy. (Video is changed from original post to one that doesn’t require Facebook login)

And a few more tutorials

Simple mask that can be made with a sewing machine, from Craft Passion

If you get good at making homemade masks, especially the ones with HEPA filters, some hospitals are now accepting donations of homemade masks as well. Check to see what is going on in your local area.

If the papers cited above are correct, wearing a mask now when you need to leave the house for essential chores will reduce the time it takes to bring our cases down, and public use of masks could be invaluable in keeping cases low when people start to go back to work.

We can change our culture from stigmatizing masks to expecting people wear them. It happened in the Czech Republic in less than two weeks. We can do it too.

If you have the time, please watch this video. It was the thing that really made all of this click for me, and it has a ton of great information. Here is a shorter video from the Czech youtuber who started the movement in his country which I also recommend watching & sharing.

Please reblog & add resouces, tutorials, or mask selfies! There are three main things you can do to help spread the word and normalize mask wearing: 1) share videos & other information on the topic; 2) take a selfie of you wearing a home-made mask; 3) spread the message, with hashtag #masks4all.

March 30th updates:

A lot has happened in the four days since I wrote the post. Some news:

George Gao, director-general of the Chinese CDC, gave an interview about the biggest mistakes other countries are making:

President of Slovakia, Zuzana Chepalova has been matching her masks to her outfits this week. Slovakia has also made masks mandatory in public.

A team of public health experts at American Enterprise Institute included public use of masks a key part of their strategy:

US Senator Pat Toomey calls for the public to wear homemade masks to prevent the spread of covid-19. 

Not news, but important, here is the conclusion of a study that evaluated homemade masks against surgical and n95 respirators for protection against respiratory infection:

A great new summary video to share, featuring experts from the Czech medical community and the Minister of Health of the Czech Republic:

In addition to the t-shirt method in the original post, here are three more face-covering tutorials that do not require a sewing machine:

This one is disposable!

Here is how to turn a t-shirt into an impromptu face covering, no cutting or sewing required.

5 more new sew styles. Could potentially be reinforced with a paper towel, or additional cloth.

I want to end with a plea not to treat the masks as a substitute for quarantine, social distancing, hygiene and other measures. The biggest fear in recommending masks to the public is that people might get a false sense of security from them. If people use masks as an excuse to take these other precautions less seriously, it could undo any benefit they have and even make the situation worse. If you wear a mask, you MUST continue with all the social distancing and hygiene measures as before. Don’t think of the mask as permission to do risky things: think of it as a constant reminder of how careful we must be.

Mask or not: isolate yourself when sick, stay home as much as possible, keep a safe distance from others when you must go out, avoid touching your face, and wash your hands frequently and well.

Stay safe y’all. These are wild times